Manage your internet presence like it is an indispensable part of your 21st-century job search. Effectively managing your online brand can either make or break your job search success.
Not only should you be actively reaching out to recruiters and hiring authorities, but leverage your efforts with direct social media networking channels. Strive to be a positive, influential person via LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
This combination creates an effective job search strategy to increase your exposure to more teaching career opportunities.
If you have a website, blog, Facebook profile, or other web presence, there are two things to examine:
1. Can people find you?
2. When they do, what will be their first impression?
If you act responsibly on social media channels, you will not have to worry about what people might find or not find?
Steps to Ensure You Have the Right Balance
Promoting yourself on the Internet can be challenging. You want to be searchable, in that if someone types in your name to Google, you want to be found. In this day in age, it can be detrimental if nothing exists in your name. On the other hand, you don’t want the information that pops up in your search to be unprofessional.
The focus here is keeping your “professional presence” what you intend it to be. Someday, you will probably need to rely on it for future education employment. Your internet presence is your personal brand. When schools and students Google search you, what they find should encompass your brand. This means they should be able to find everything related to their professional endeavors.
Keywords Play a Huge Role
Keywords are not just for resumes. If you have written education articles, books, have posted classroom projects or student work, or have given professional presentations. All of these belong in categories with keywords associated with them. Choosing the correct keywords will help those articles be searchable under your name, adding to your professional internet presence.
Screen icons should represent you and your skills, not necessarily be cute and fuzzy. The screen name you choose can make or break you. Can others take you seriously with your screen name?
Facebook for the family can be cute; Facebook for your education career should represent your skills and talents.
Taglines are similar to screen names. They should be carefully chosen to represent you and your work- in as few words as possible as a slogan is meant to be catchy. Make it short and to-the-point.
Work samples will show a variety to the reader, but be cognizant of what samples you show. If you show personal or proprietary information on the web, you may be held liable.
Always ask your students before posting their material on the World Wide Web. Don’t post everything you’ve ever done. When your portfolio list gets too long, it’s an excellent idea to post a listing of the items (if needed), not the entire work.
When you can refer everyone from your parents and spouse to potential school principals and schools to your website or blog, safely bet your web presence is heading in the right direction. Sleep easier knowing your future school principal won’t find that “questionable whatever-it-is item.”
If you’d like to strengthen your internet presence by building a LinkedIn profile, we can help. We help clients by providing social media job networking coaching.
Find out more about our service by sending Candace an email or calling toll-free at 1 877 738-8052.
Job search tip: social media job networking should help your job search, not hinder it. Click To Tweet